Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Sometimes, we reject a claim about reality because it doesn’t
fit with other claims about which we have better evidence overall. Your aunt, who has smoked 2 packs of
cigarettes a day for 20 years, is diagnosed with lung cancer. She has a job working in a building where
there has been construction that has created a lot of dust over the last
several weeks and she insists that it is the dust, not the smoking, that is the
cause of the cancer. Or perhaps she,
like millions of Americans, believes in hexes.
And she’s suspicious that her neighbor across the street, with whom she
has had a lot of personal friction over many years, has something to do with
the cancer. The hateful thoughts
radiating from the house across the street have made her sick, she thinks. In either case, the evidence we have for the
smoking being the cause of her cancer is better, and with some thought and
investigation, we could conclude with confidence that the smoking hypothesis is
proven, and the other theories are disproven.
Let’s call this Inductive Disproof.

A brief note about proof:
Many people who haven’t reflected on the topic much have the sense that
we should reserve the term “proof” only for those cases where we have the most
substantial level of deductive certainty.
We can prove, for instance, that 2 + 2 = 4, or that bachelors are
unmarried. But we shouldn’t use the term
proof for other matters of less confidence.
Furthermore, their sense is that we should only use “proof” about
indefeasible conclusions, claims that we would not change our minds about under
any circumstances. For other matters,
like smoking and cancer, the connection between a high calorie diet and
obesity, and who won last year’s Superbowl, we should describe the status of
our beliefs in some other way. And many of the same people who feel this way
about proof have the same impulse about “knowledge.” We only know those things, they say, that we
can prove. No other less certain matters
should be called knowledge.

For a number of reasons, I think it is a mistake to reserve “proof”
for only indefeasibly certain matters. First,
if we raise the bar on “proof” this high, then there remains little or nothing
that we know. On this view, we don’t
know that smoking causes cancer, that the sun will rise tomorrow, that the sun
rose yesterday, that Obama is the President, that violent crime is on the
decline in the United States, that people who have a low fat, high fiber diet
with lots of exercise tend to live longer than those without, and so on. Too many things that we comfortably and
normally claim to know must now be described in some other artificial manner. Second, we can have our cake and eat it too;
we can readily acknowledge that there are things we know and that we have
proven, but our conclusion is defeasible.
We can say that even though the evidence supports the conclusion
overall, we are prepared, under the right circumstances, to change our minds in
the light of new information. We know
that the force of gravity, for instance, on the surface of the Earth is 9.8
meters/sec2. (The extreme
proof/knowledge advocate must insist awkwardly and artificially, “No, we don’t
really know that, we only have a massive amount of evidence and justification
for it.”) A more natural way to proceed
here is to say that we know, and have proven, many things beyond the
deductively certain. But we are always
ready to incorporate new evidence into our theories about what is true and
change our minds if that becomes warranted.
Third, people who press for the extreme proof/knowledge view are quite
vulnerable to the Going Nuclear problem. Fourth, the extreme proof/knowledge view often fall into the Sliding Scale Fallacy. And fifthly, to make the extreme proof/knowledge advocate
happy, we can easily make a distinction that is widely accepted and
acknowledged in the sciences between inductive and deductive
proof/justification.

Now back to varieties of disproof. Sometimes we reject a claim because it is
internally inconsistent or logically contradictory. We know that Smith is not a married bachelor
for instance, or that a three sided figure labeled ABC is not a square, because
married bachelors and three sided squares are logically impossible. Deductive disproofs of the existence of God
in this category have either argued that a single attribute that is typically
given to God like omnipotence is impossible, or that some combination of
properties like infinitely just and infinitely merciful are mutually
inconsistent. Let’s call these Single
Property Deductive Disproof and Multiple Property Deductive Disproof. There is an an extensive philosophical literature stretching
across centuries offering these sorts of disproofs for God. See:

Sometimes we reject a claim because the concepts that it employs
and the model of reality that is embedded in the concepts has become
impoverished, bankrupt, useless, or inapt at describing reality. Consider three theories about a sick person
who is exhibiting swollen lymph nodes, gangrene, fever, malaise, and seizures.

He might be possessed by evil demons, he
might have an imbalance in his four humors—black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and
blood—that could be rectified with leeches, or he might have a bacterial
infection of yersenia pestis—Bubonic Plague.
The Bubonic Plague theory along with modern virology in which it is
embedded turns out to be far better at recognizing the ailment, treating it,
curing it, preventing it, making predicitions, and so on. If we successfully cure the patient by means
of virology and the Bubonic Plague hypothesis, it’s not so much that we have
disproven the evil demon possession claim in any deductive or logical
sense. It’s still logically possible
that there could be evil demons disguised at the yersenia pestis bacteria in
his blood. But holding onto the evil
demon claim and the baggage that comes with it just becomes increasingly
useless, and extraneous in our model of reality.

At some point we leave some ideas behind
because they just don’t fit with the rest of what we know about reality. It strikes me as natural and sensible to say
that we know that those symptoms are
caused by yersenia pestis now. We have
proven that the illness is caused by the bacteria, and not by evil demons. Let’s
call this sort of case Theoretical Disproof.

So on this way
of carving things up, we have at least fours kinds of disproof: Inductive Disproof, Single Property
Deductive Disproof, Multiple Property Deductive Disproof, and Theoretical
Disproof. There are others, and there
are different ways of mapping out the epistemological landscape. But this will suffice for now.

As I see it,
the God hypothesis, where God is described in the ways that the vast majority
of modern believers describe him, fails because of arguments of all four
types. More details about can be found
in the over 300 posts on this blog written over the years, in my recent book
Atheism and the Case Against Christ, and in the book I’m now working on
Atheism: Proving the Negative. There are some other accounts of God that
escape those four varieties of Atheological Disproof, but those, as far as I
can tell, just end up being vaccuous, trivial, or unmotivated—God is love, God
is the development of human self-awareness, God is energy, God is reality.

So the
challenge for the theist, as I see it, is to first come up with a description
of God that is internally, logicall coherent.
It must attribute properties to God that are individually coherent, and
that are logically consistent with each other.
And this description must navigate around the broad set of Deductive
Atheological arguments that have undermined the God concept. Furthermore, the description needs to it
needs to be sufficiently superlative to warrant the "God"
label," and, one would hope, it would have some semblance to the
supernatural being that billions of traditional believers have advocated for
centuries. Then the theist reconcile the
claim that this being is real with the a posteriori facts as we know them—the theist
must deal with the Inductive Disproofs for God.
The theist needs to address the problem of evil, the problem of divine
hiddenness, and a host of other serious inductive challenges that have come up
over the centuries.

But even all of
that wouldn’t be sufficient to justify theism, as I see it. We could construct some account of evil
demons that is internally logically consistent.
And we could add enough provisos, tweaks, and emendations to the story
to accommodate all of the details of modern virology. Evil demons are clever and sinister, you see,
and part of their malevolent deception of us is that they are disguising their
activities to look like bacterial infections, cancer, and so on. How do you know, afterall, that viruses and
bacterial infection aren’t just the way that evil demons do us harm? Like evil
demonology, theology has been rendered superfluous and vacuous by the rest of
what we have learned about biology, geology, history, psychology, anthropology,
astronomy, and cosmology.

The theist, as I see it, has to
do more than sketch out some scheme whereby it might be possible that God
employed evolution to create us, for example.
The theist needs to give us some substantial positive evidence for
thinking that it is true. Possible, as I have argued many times, it not probable or reasonable or justified.

30 comments:

Evidence is something that contributes to knowledge of what happened.Proof is evidence that is sufficient to demonstrate the certainty (or truth) of something.(Copi 28, Essentials of Logic)Evidence is something that may lead to proof. It may not.

A posteriori considerations depend on their probability and on their respective explanatory power therefore they are not conclusive evidence The criteria for judging inductive arguments are guidelines for judging the relative strength of an inductive argument, they generally do not give you grounds for claiming conclusively that an argument is acceptable. (Copi 334)

Often discussions I have with Christians over their claimed certainty of knowledge will center on the words "know", "believe", and "trust". I strongly doubt that most Christians believe, have faith in, or trust what they claim is true. I use this thought experiment as an illustration:

You lose control of a car driving down an icy street, the car slams into a tree, crushing the frame, only the passenger door is operable. You are trapped. You are suddenly seized by a tremendous pain in your chest that radiates down the left arm. Still conscious, you recognize that there are just a few minutes to get aid to prevent death. You are relieved as you see two people approaching, the first to get to the car is a man waving a Bible who gets in the passenger seat and urges you to pray with him, citing chapter and verse, Matthew 21:22, "If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” You begin to pray. The second person arrives, a women carrying a portable defibrillator. Do you demand that the bible-waver get out of the car and make room for the women? I argue that the person you turn to for aid reveals your knowledge, faith, and trust.

Interesting post. I agreed with the paragraph saying "it is a mistake to reserve “proof” for only indefeasibly certain matters." As it turns out, I am currently in the process of writing a booklet titled "Does science prove God exists?"

In the introduction I note that we have two types of courts in the US. One is the criminal court system and one is the civil court system. The instructions to the jury in each court are quite different. A higher level of proof is required to convict a man of a crime than to decide between to litigants in a civil case.

In a criminal court it is "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" and in a civil court it is "preponderance of evidence" or "greater weight of evidence."

It makes perfect sense to me to use preponderance of evidence as the standard when deciding on the existence of God.

By the way, it was the science evidence that convinced atheist philosopher Anthony Flew that God existed.

Ron, Using the search engine at www.infidels.org for Antony Flew gives us a good idea of what Flew’s conversation actually is all about. I am afraid that due to your Christian apologists, you have missed characterized the Flew argument.

Nick Covington:“All over the Internet, Christian apologists have been ecstatic about "converting" long time atheist Antony Flew to belief in God. Of course, Flew only believes in some vague sort of intelligent creator, and he is still insistent that there is no afterlife and that all so-called revealed religions are false. Nevertheless, Christian Apologists such as Roy Varghese and Lee Strobel are over the moon about Flew's change of heart. Perhaps they think it adds credibility to their beliefs.”

Raymond Bradle”“On the one hand, you have been persuaded by some of the stuff you've recently read that naturalistic explanations of apparent design in the universe just aren't credible. In particular, you now subscribe to the idea that there are unbridgeable gaps in evolutionary history, gaps such as those alleged to exist between nonliving and living matter. And since, on your view, it is "inordinately difficult" to give a naturalistic explanation of the origins of living organisms, you conclude that only some nonnaturalistic explanation will suffice, i.e., that only the intervention of some sort of supernatural agent, to be called "God," can fill these gaps.”

I have actually read Anthony Flew's new book "There is a God." I know the evidence he is looking at and the preponderance of evidence is on the side of God's existence. I don't think this is well understood yet and that is why I am writing the booklet.

You are correct that Flew did not become a Christian. At the time he and Roy Varghese wrote the book, Flew was a deist. However, Flew did speak very highly of Christianity in the book. I don't have the book in front of me or I would quote a few sentences. I would like to think Flew became a Christian prior to his death but I don't have any evidence of that.

But Flew's book is quite good. He talks about what he used to believe and why he changed his mind.

To answer your question, if I was up for murder I would certainly want the higher standard of proof without reasonable doubt.

Regarding the existence of God - If you understand probability theory as Pascal did - then you would certainly want preponderance of evidence. As I understand it, Matt is also arguing for preponderance of evidence or something roughly equivalent.

Ron, Without getting into the mess of Bayes Theorem, Pascal would probably accept the following argument from probability:

Let o be a statement to﻿ the effect the cosmos is ordered in a certain way. The conclusion, g, asserts the existence of a creator-god. pr(g|o) > pr(!g|o). The fact that pr(o|g) is high does not necessarily mean that pr(g|o) is high. There is no reason to believe(inverse probability) pr(g) > pr(!g) in fact it would be the other way around. So a priori, it is much more likely that there is no creator.

P(A|B) = P(A given B) = we know B occurred what is the probability that A occurred

The probability of god(g) based on the background information (k), where k is evidence without proof is less that 50% pr(g k) < .5

No. Pascal would not accept that argument, especially not in today's world. Pascal was not approving of the deductive arguments for God but he was very supportive of evidences for God. And the number and quality of evidence for God from science is much, much greater than in Pascal's day.

I'm never quite sure what the point of the name dropping of famous theists, or famous atheists who converted is supposed to accomplish. Is the argument supposed to be something like, "1. If X famous atheist converted, then so should McCormick. 2. Flew converted. 3. therefore, so should McCormick?" It's always possible to find outliers on the curve, of course. Famous Harvard psychiatrist John Mack was convinced that alien abductions of humans were real. Linus Pauling became convinced that mega doses of vitamin C could cure all sorts of ailments. Isaac Newton advocated astrology and alchemy. But in general, education and intelligence are inversely correlated with religiousness. That is, as intelligence and education go up, religiousness drops off. What matters in science and academics is when an informed, broad based consensus develops in a relevant field of experts. Recent polling of professional philosophers shows the wide majority of them as atheists. The vast majority of the world's best scientists are atheists. So what is the believer supposed to make of this puzzling part of the theist's apologetic playbook?

"But in general, education and intelligence are inversely correlated with religiousness. That is, as intelligence and education go up, religiousness drops off. What matters in science and academics is when an informed, broad based consensus develops in a relevant field of experts. Recent polling of professional philosophers shows the wide majority of them as atheists. The vast majority of the world's best scientists are atheists. So what is the believer supposed to make of this puzzling part of the theist's apologetic playbook?"

But you're talking about people in our modern western world. The prevailing modern western metaphysic shapes our beliefs about the world. Moreover it matters not at all that the wide majority of professional philosophers are atheists, reject a belife in a "life after death", etc. What matters is the arguments they advance to support their positions. And in my experience their arguments almost inevitably attack the weakest concepts of a "god". It is not therefore surprising that they are atheists!

"Furthermore, the description needs to it needs to be sufficiently superlative to warrant the "God" label," and, one would hope, it would have some semblance to the supernatural being that billions of traditional believers have advocated for centuries".

I'm sure you would like that. It's very easy to attack the beliefs of people who have never entertained a philosophical thought in their lives. Somewhat more difficult to attack sophisticated concepts of "God", but which might still be reasonably labelled "God", as advocated by intellectuals.

"A brief note about proof: Many people who haven’t reflected on the topic much have the sense that we should reserve the term “proof” only for those cases where we have the most substantial level of deductive certainty".

Well that's simply what the word "proof" means. So it makes no difference how much we have reflected on the topic (and I have done so a lot).

"And many of the same people who feel this way about proof have the same impulse about “knowledge.” We only know those things, they say, that we can prove. No other less certain matters should be called knowledge".

Indeed many people do. However I don't.

"For a number of reasons, I think it is a mistake to reserve “proof” for only indefeasibly certain matters. First, if we raise the bar on “proof” this high, then there remains little or nothing that we know".

Here you conflate proof and knowledge. Just because we cannot prove something doesn't mean to say we lack knowledge.

You wrote:"'m never quite sure what the point of the name dropping of famous theists, or famous atheists who converted is supposed to accomplish. Is the argument supposed to be something like, "1. If X famous atheist converted, then so should McCormick. 2. Flew converted. 3. therefore, so should McCormick?"

No, that is not the argument. The argument is that Flew knew all of the arguments used here to disprove the existence of God. He fact he helped formulate some of them. But these deductive arguments ultimately failed, just like they always have through history. It took about 20 years for Flew to change his mind, but he made a commitment to follow the evidence wherever it led. Eventually Flew found the evidence from science supporting God's existence more compelling. Therefore McCormick should drop his attempts to prove or disprove God from deductive argument and make a commitment to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

"Famous Harvard psychiatrist John Mack was convinced that alien abductions of humans were real."

Sorry. can't comment on this one as I don't know the story.

"Linus Pauling became convinced that mega doses of vitamin C could cure all sorts of ailments."

This is quite true. Our knowledge of science and medicine is increasing all the time. Pauling was on the right track. Vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant and antioxidants have powerful natural healing abilities. Different organs benefit from different types of antioxidants. The antioxidants in green tea are especially good for the lungs. The antioxidants in coffee are especially good for the colon, etc. There are two keys to living a long life - calorie restriction and a high level of antioxidants in your body.

"Isaac Newton advocated astrology and alchemy."

This is also true. I've never understood his attraction to astrology but his interest in alchemy is consistent with the level of scientific knowledge in his day. The truth is that lead and gold are made in the same way, inside stars. In Newton's day, they did not understand the process like we do today.

"But in general, education and intelligence are inversely correlated with religiousness. That is, as intelligence and education go up, religiousness drops off. What matters in science and academics is when an informed, broad based consensus develops in a relevant field of experts. Recent polling of professional philosophers shows the wide majority of them as atheists. The vast majority of the world's best scientists are atheists. So what is the believer supposed to make of this puzzling part of the theist's apologetic playbook?"

Your statements here are not quite correct. The percentage of scientists who believe in God today is roughly the same as 100 years ago. It is true that polling shows the more educated people are, the less likely they are to be religious - but the reason has more to do with our education system than the quality of the evidence. Go to any major university and you are far more likely to find more atheists in the philosophy department than you are in the physics department or the mathematics department.

Regarding the apologists playbook, my guess is that the goal is to get people to agree to look at the evidence. Of course, it is not possible to argue anyone into the kingdom of God. Even if the person is willing to follow the evidence where it leads, as Anthony Flew did, that does not mean the person will bow the knee to the Creator. There is always a choice involved in faith. The apologist's goal (at least my goal) is to let people know it is not unreasonable to believe in God.

Ron,I think you are being hypocritical by stating “my goal is to let people know it is not unreasonable to believe in God”, but then try to convert atheist to your belief system and arguing about the preponderance of evidence. Professor Kirby, who is a secular humanist, thinks theist do have an epistemic right to their beliefs. If we take William James’ ‘Will to Believe”, Richard Taylor on Faith, Wittgenstein’s fideism, Plantinga on reformed epistemology seriously then Christians can not be considered insane.Instead of arguing about how philosophers have failed to prove the negative, you should be writing a justification of knowledge for Feelings (religious experience), Facts (natural theology) and Faith.

Ron,PS: Students of philosophy engage in epistemic discourse in an analytical approach to the writings, for instance, W.K. Clifford “The Ethics of Belief” versus William James “The Will to Believe”. Apologetics (from the Greek, a defense), which assume the premise “God exists” does not engage in such activity. To reiterate, if you are posting to a philosophers website, you should be more philosophical.

There is nothing hypocritical in my stance or actions. My goal is to let people know belief in God is reasonable. In order to convince this, I have two areas of activity. First, I have to show the errors in the deductive arguments against God's existence. Second, I need to explain the positive evidence for God's existence from science.

There is no grounds for saying (3) is an Omni-God or a personal being with moral perfection. This says nothing about just one being. It could be some cosmic force gravity.

A flaw in Aquinas thinking is in that he assumes that what exists contingently cannot exist through all time.

According to Hume, a cause must precede its effect. It is clearly impossible for anything to cause itself. For to cause itself, it would have to precede itself.

4)Existence is not a predicate (Kant).5)Existential statements are second order. 6)No existential statements can be logically necessary.7)A necessary non contingent grounding of contingency logically can not be an Omni-God

Ron,Nice work around.However, quoting you “I have to show the errors in the deductive arguments against God's existence.” and “I have already conceded that any attempt to prove God through deductive reasoning is doomed to failure”.

Do you or do you not have to show why a deductive argument is a failure?

I maintain pseudoscience = df. “trying to explain the positive evidence for God's existence from science”.

Let Ta = absolute start of time or df. T = 0.Let Tp = Planck time = 6.4x10E-44 seconds.In contemporary physical science there is no first instance Ta. In other words the universe is half-open in the earlier direction prior toTp. It is illogical to instantiate an archetype supernatural being, i.e. “god of the gaps”, because such an entity would be eternal and therefore a potential infinity (Aristotle) before Tp.

If you think that your pseudoscience includes an anthropic principle and God has purposely created a “Goldilocks zone“, Dr. Stenger and Dr. Krause have knocked that idea out of the ball park.

Well, I see you are at least familiar with some of the arguments regarding the Big Bang. This is a start.

Regarding the start of time, it is true that physicists and mathematicians can model the early universe mathematically going back in time to just after the Big Bang. They can model to t > 0 (about one trillionth of a second after the Big Bang), but they cannot model t = 0. The reason is the math breaks down due to infinities. But this does not mean that t = 0 (the start of time) did not happen. Logic and the laws of physics can take us back further than mathematics alone.

When we say we can only model to t > 0, someone may think t > 0 means a singularity that could remain static for an indefinite period. But the laws of physics say if something exists that is immensely hot and dense, it would immediately begin to expand and cool.

If someone, for atheological reasons for example, wanted to say that t = 0 never existed, he would have to exchange the miracle of creation for two miracles which are even more improbable. Instead of God creating the universe from nothing, you would have to say that a stable, non-expanding singularity existed in eternity past (the first miracle) and that for no reason at all suddenly lost its ability to remain hot and dense and began to expand and cool without any cause (the second miracle).

As you can probably tell, I don't have enough faith to believe the second scenario. Logic demands the t = 0 happened.

The Goldilocks Zone is only one small part of the fine-tuned universe argument from science. Stenger has written a book with lots of arm waving on the fine-tuned universe, but he only deals with a few of the observations of the fine-tuned universe and there are hundreds of them. More importantly, they are interconnected. This is a point Stenger evidently missed or did not understand. His argument is mainly about the isotopes of carbon. He suggests if one parameter was changed to reduce the amount of carbon in the universe that you could change another parameter and get the carbon back. The problem is that changes other parameters causes other problems. A full refutation of Stenger will be forthcoming.

I have stated that I am a student of Philosophy with enough units for a minor. I am a retired EE(electrical engineer) with a masters degree.

I would like to know what qualifications you have, so you can be taken seriously, in challenging the likes of Dr. McCormick, Dr. Stenger, Dr. Krause, Dr. Drange, Dr. Rowe, Dr. Martin, et al?

You just proved that you are a pseudosciencist. A real sciencist does try to explain the unknown by instantiating an archetype supernatural being that peforms miracles. David Hume’s (1711-1776) Section X in his essay An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding regarding claims that miracles can never be justified. Hume’s definition of a miracle is “a violation of the laws of nature”. Swinburne agrees with Hume and states a miracle is “a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity or by the interposition of some invisible agent”. Here is Hume’s argument:1. Laws of nature are a posteriori considerations. “all men must die…fire consumes wood…these events are found to be agreeable to the laws of nature”2. Our experiences are very strong in support of natural laws.“Conclusions as are founded on an infallible experience, he expects the event with the last degree of assurance, and regards his past experience as full proof”3. A miracle is a violation of nature.4. By definition, this is a breach of highly probable rules of the universe.5. Therefore, it is not justifiable to believe that a miracle has occurred.The FIRST problem is you have not established that a Deity or some invisible agent is a metaphysical reality. The SECOND problem as stated in Dr. Matt’s book in chapter 9 “Would God do Miracles?”The THIRD problem I state as :1) If there is a God, For an infinite time Tp₋ₓ God does not have the will to create, because God is perfection, and would not have needs or wants. 2) If there is a God, At some point in the infinite past of nothingness, God has the will to create (Why)?3) If there is a God, Given E=mc², how can God bring about energy or matter out of nothing?

You understand that Georges Lemaitre a Belgian priest is responsible for proposing the Big Bang. The Pope heralded it as proof of Genesis, and then had to retract because it was science not theological.

@ Ron Crumbthought experiments are our thoughts now about a possibility at another time. The woman with the AED is only potential aid (at the moment your heart is still beating, you're conscious)and not a guarantee of continued life. Her potential outside or inside the car with life resuscitation is equally effective. As you revealed in your answer, you mentally adjust the probability of survival to human, not divine, direct aid. The prayer is answered, bible-waver depart, let's get on with some real solutions! Your trust in humans outweighs your trust in the divine. After the accident, should you live, the rationale that God answered your prayer would be typical thinking for the Christian. If the AED was never used for your survival the thought that it was divinely planned would, I propose, drop from the "God saved me" narrative altogether.

You have misinterpreted your own scenario (example), and therefore missed the truth of the example.

"If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” You begin to pray”, and did believe that God would answer your prayer.”

And then God did answer the prayer because,

“The second person arrives, a women carrying a portable defibrillator. Do you demand that the bible-waver get out of the car and make room for the women?”

No since, you wouldn’t have to ask me to move, since I would willingly get out of the way, because I would have recognized the “women carrying a portable defibrillator” has the answer to the injured person’s prayer, just as I did here.

“I argue that the person you turn to for aid reveals your knowledge, faith, and trust.”

My book is out:

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Atheism

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Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester. Teaching at CSUS since 1996. My main area of research and publication now is atheism and philosophy of religion. I am also interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and rational decision theory/critical thinking.

Quotes:

"Science. It works, bitches."

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

"Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time. But he loves you! He loves you and he needs money!"George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Many Paths, No God.

I don't go to church, I AM a church, for fuck's sake. I'm MINISTRY. --Al Jourgensen

Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

If life evolved, then there isn't anything left for God to do.

The universe is not fine-tuned for humanity. Humanity is fine-tuned to the universe. Victor Stenger

Skeptical theists choose to ride the trolley car of skepticism concerning the goods that God would know so as to undercut the evidential argument from evil. But once on that trolley car it may not be easy to prevent that skepticism from also undercutting any reasons they may suppose they have for thinking that God will provide them and the worshipful faithful with life everlasting in his presence. William Rowe

Unless you're one of those Easter-bunny vitalists who believes that personality results from some unquantifiable divine spark, there's really no alternative to the mechanistic view of human nature. Peter Watts

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. E.O. Wilson

Creating humans who could understand the contrast between good and evil without subjecting them to eons of horrible suffering would be an utterly inconsequential matter for an omnipotent being. MM

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity? It would be so easy to improve upon the 10 Commandments. How about "Try not to deep fry all of your food"? Sam Harris

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would think--though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one--that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true--that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

If atheism is a religion, then not playing chess is a hobby.

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything--anything--be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in." Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 36.

"Only a tiny fraction of corpsesfossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water." Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 127.

One cannot take, "believing in X gives me hope, makes me moral, or gives me comfort," to be a reason for believing X. It might make me moral if I believe that I will be shot the moment I do something immoral, but that doesn't make it possible for me to believe it, or to take its effects on me as reasons for thinking it is true. Matt McCormick

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Top Ten Myths about Belief in God

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives.

2. Myth: Prayer works.

Numerous studies have now shown that remote, blind, inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of subject's health, psychological states, or longevity. Furthermore, we have no evidence to support the view that people who wish fervently in their heads for things that they want get those things at any higher rate than people who do not.

3. Myth: Atheists are less decent, less moral, and overall worse people than believers.

There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominately non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies.

4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with the descriptions, explanations and products of science.

In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. So we have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion.

5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive the death of the body.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. Allegations of spirit chandlers, psychics, ghost stories, and communications with the dead have all turned out to be frauds, deceptions, mistakes, and lies.

6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Only belief in God makes people moral.

Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view, not to mention these other famous atheists: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, John Stuart Mill, Galileo, George Bernard Shaw, Gloria Steinam, James Madison, John Adams, and so on.

7. Myth: Believing in God is never a root cause of significant evil.

The counter examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the direct justification for their perpetrated horrendous evils on humankind are too numerous to mention.

8. Myth: The existence of God would explain the origins of the universe and humanity.

All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins--why are we here, where are we going, what is the point of it all, why is the universe here--still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it isall going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law "create" or "build" a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, "loves" us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? How could such a being have any sort of personal relationship with beings like us?

9. Myth: Even if it isn't true, there's no harm in my believing in God anyway.

People's religious views inform their voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight. How could any reasonable person think that religious beliefs are insignificant.

10: Myth: There is a God.

Common Criticisms of Atheism (and Why They’re Mistaken)

1. You can’t prove atheism.You can never prove a negative, so atheism requires as much faith as religion.

Atheists are frequently accosted with this accusation, suggesting that in order for non-belief to be reasonable, it must be founded on deductively certain grounds. Many atheists within the deductive atheology tradition have presented just those sorts of arguments, but those arguments are often ignored. But more importantly, the critic has invoked a standard of justification that almost none of our beliefs meet. If we demand that beliefs are not justified unless we have deductive proof, then all of us will have to throw out the vast majority of things we currently believe—oxygen exists, the Earth orbits the Sun, viruses cause disease, the 2008 summer Olympics were in China, and so on. The believer has invoked one set of abnormally stringent standards for the atheist while helping himself to countless beliefs of his own that cannot satisfy those standards. Deductive certainty is not required to draw a reasonable conclusion that a claim is true.

As for requiring faith, is the objection that no matter what, all positions require faith?Would that imply that one is free to just adopt any view they like?Religiousness and non-belief are on the same footing?(they aren’t).If so, then the believer can hardly criticize the non-believer for not believing. Is the objection that one should never believe anything on the basis of faith?Faith is a bad thing?That would be a surprising position for the believer to take, and, ironically, the atheist is in complete agreement.

2. The evidence shows that we should believe.

If in fact there is sufficient evidence to indicate that God exists, then a reasonable person should believe it. Surprisingly, very few people pursue this line as a criticism of atheism. But recently, modern versions of the design and cosmological arguments have been presented by believers that require serious consideration. Many atheists cite a range of reasons why they do not believe that these arguments are successful. If an atheist has reflected carefully on the best evidence presented for God’s existence and finds that evidence insufficient, then it’s implausible to fault them for irrationality, epistemic irresponsibility, or for being obviously mistaken.Given that atheists are so widely criticized, and that religious belief is so common and encouraged uncritically, the chances are good that any given atheist has reflected more carefully about the evidence.

3. You should have faith.

Appeals to faith also should not be construed as having prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence or arguments do. The general view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound, that imposes an epistemic obligation of sorts on her to accept the conclusion. One person’s faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. At the very least, having faith, where that means believing despite a lack of evidence or despite contrary evidence is highly suspect. Having faith is the questionable practice, not failing to have it.

4. Atheism is bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing.

These accusations have been dealt with countless times. But let’s suppose that they are correct. Would they be reasons to reject the truth of atheism? They might be unpleasant affects, but having negative emotions about a claim doesn’t provide us with any evidence that it is false. Imagine upon hearing news about the Americans dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki someone steadfastly refused to believe it because it was bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing. Suppose we refused to believe that there is an AIDS epidemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people in Africa on the same grounds.

5.Atheism is bad for you.Some studies in recent years have suggested that people who regularly attend church, pray, and participate in religious activities are happier, live longer, have better health, and less depression.

First, these results and the methodologies that produced them have been thoroughly criticized by experts in the field.Second, it would be foolish to conclude that even if these claims about quality of life were true, that somehow shows that there is theism is correct and atheism is mistaken.What would follow, perhaps, is that participating in social events like those in religious practices are good for you, nothing more.There are a number of obvious natural explanations.Third, it is difficult to know the direction of the causal arrow in these cases.Does being religious result in these positive effects, or are people who are happier, healthier, and not depressed more inclined to participate in religions for some other reasons?Fourth, in a number of studies atheistic societies like those in northern Europe scored higher on a wide range of society health measures than religious societies.

Given that atheists make up a tiny proportion of the world’s population, and that religious governments and ideals have held sway globally for thousands of years, believers will certainly lose in a contest over “who has done more harm,” or “which ideology has caused more human suffering.”It has not been atheism because atheists have been widely persecuted, tortured, and killed for centuries nearly to the point of extinction.

Sam Harris has argued that the problem with these regimes has been that they became too much like religions.“Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag, and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”

7.Atheists are harsh, intolerant, and hateful of religion.

Sam Harris has advocated something he calls “conversational intolerance.”For too long, a confusion about religious tolerance has led people to look the other way and say nothing while people with dangerous religious agendas have undermined science, the public good, and the progress of the human race.There is no doubt that people are entitled to read what they choose, write and speak freely, and pursue the religions of their choice.But that entitlement does not guarantee that the rest of us must remain silent or not verbally criticize or object to their ideas and their practices, especially when they affect all of us.Religious beliefs have a direct affect on who a person votes for, what wars they fight, who they elect to the school board, what laws they pass, who they drop bombs on, what research they fund (and don’t), which social programs they fund (and don’t), and a long list of other vital, public matters.Atheists are under no obligation to remain silent about those beliefs and practices that urgently need to be brought into the light and reasonably evaluated.

Real respect for humanity will not be found by indulging your neighbor’s foolishness, or overlooking dangerous mistakes.Real respect is found in disagreement.The most important thing we can do for each other is disagree vigorously and thoughtfully so that we can all get closer to the truth.

8.Science is as much a religious ideology as religion is.

At their cores, religions and science have a profound difference.The essence of religion is sustaining belief in the face of doubts, obeying authority, and conforming to a fixed set of doctrines.By contrast, the most important discovery that humans have ever made is the scientific method.The essence of that method is diametrically opposed to religious ideals:actively seek out disconfirming evidence.The cardinal virtues of the scientific approach are to doubt, analyze, critique, be skeptical, and always be prepared to draw a different conclusion if the evidence demands it.